The University Libraries began to develop and program
collections to support Cuban studies in the late 1920s,
and in 1952 under the national Farmington Plan,
assumed a special responsibility for acquisitions.
Printed works, manuscripts, maps and microforms
dealing with Cuba are divided primarily between the
libraries' very extensive Latin American Collection,
the PK Yonge Library of Florida History, the Map &
Imagery Library, and the Rare Book & Manuscript
units of the Special & Area Studies Collections
Department. Holdings of Cuban material can also be
found in the Marston Science Library, the Documents
Department, the Price Library of Judaica, the Legal
Information Center and all other campus library units.

Conservation treatments and actions are a long-standing
part of UF programming.

See below for details on that, and on digital work to
enhance access a rapidly expanding priority.

Overviews
Inquiries may be addressed to the appropriate collection
at the University of Florida Libraries, Gainesville,
Florida, 32611, USA.

-mawl

glp E

www.uflib.ufl.edu/lac

The Latin American Collection alone contains
thousands of printed works and reels of microfilm
concerning Cuba, and these holdings continue to
grow rapidly each year. This reflects the University of
Florida's overall broad-based interest in Cuba, with
many departments, from Agriculture to Fine Art,
History, Anthropology and Zoology, having research
and/or teaching interested in Cuba. Theses and
dissertations presented at the University reveal a wide
focus on Cuba.

Contact: tel. 352-273-2745

Rare Books
http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/rarebook/cuba/cuba.htm

The UF Rare Book Collection holds a great array
of materials on Cuba ranging from first editions of
literary works to hundreds of titles relating to all
aspects of Cuban society, such as religion, agriculture,
slavery, natural history,
description and travel,
legal issues, political
events, social institutions,
customs and education. ,.
Many of the titles in the
collection, both early and Lt
modern, are very rare
or located only at the
University of Florida.

Contact: tel. 352-273-2592 a 5o 'C

Cuban

Manuscripts

http:/ / web.uflib.ufl. edu/spec/browseu_ms.htm

Cuban manuscripts are conspicuous among the
collections at the University of Florida. Since the 1950s,
the university has given special focus to the acquisition of
historical materials related to the Caribbean, and there
are currently over twenty Cuban collections. Documents
from the Spanish colonial period date to as early as 1639
and include records related to slavery and military affairs.
The core of the Cuban manuscript collections covers the
years since the Cuban War of Independence, 1895-1898.
Several of the collections are from US citizens and
businesses that invested in Cuba. Chief among them are
the records of the Czarnikow-Rionda Company and its
subsidiaries and affiliates in the Braga Brothers
Collection. This remarkable collection documents the
dynamic growth of the Cuban sugar industry in the
century preceding the Castro Revolution of 1959. Other
Cuban collections document American shipping interests
in the 19th century and there are several photographic
collections. The rise of Fidel Castro is documented in
several collections including the newly received papers of
the late Dr. Neill Macaulay, professor of Latin American
History, a veteran of the 1959 revolution and an early
critic of Castro. In all, UF's Cuban holdings are among
the richest outside Cuba and Spain.

Contact: tel. 352-273-2764

Map & Imagery Library

http://www.uflib.ufl. edu/maps/

The UF Map & Imagery Library holds many sheet
and digitized maps of Cuba within its Caribbean Map
Collection. Cuban maps represent a substantial portion
of the historical and archival treasures held by UF
Maps collected on Cuba date from 1579 through the
present. These maps document Cuba's colonial past,
the importance of plantations, and the 1898 War of
Independence. Many of these were originally published
as maps independent of other publications; others were
issued with atlases, books, government documents,
shipping, railroad schedules, land promotions, etc. In
addition to colonial history, thematic maps of Cuba
show sugar mills and mining industries, road maps,
tourist maps, and administrative and political maps
before and after the 1959 Revolution. The library also
has former Soviet Union topographic sets of Cuba in
the Russian language. Many Caribbean maps including
Cuba are also found in the Florida Map Collection
highlighting a shared heritage and colonial past.
Contact: tel. 352-273-2719

PK Yonge Library of Florida History

http://web.uflib.ufl.edu/spec/pkyonge/index.html

The Yonge Library of Florida History has
always maintained materials on the history of
the Cuba as it pertains to the Florida peninsula.
Colonial correspondence between officials in
Florida and their superiors in Havana make up
a great proportion of the records for the Spanish
colonial period, especially for the period 1784 to
1821. A reference section provides information
on the holdings of many archives in Spain and
elsewhere that are important to the
study of colonial Cuba. The library ij a de
also maintains print and microfilm
collections documenting the Cuban
cigar-worker community in Florida, the
Spanish-American War, and relations
between Cubans and Cuban Americans
since 1960. The Florida Ephemera J
Collection includes pamphlets,
guides and steamship line brochures
for travel to Cuba in the Gilded Age
and early 1900s. The Al Burt Papers,
comprising interviews, research notes
and articles by this award-winning
Miami Herald foreign correspondent,
reporter and columnist, contain
significant photographs and audio
tapes for Cuba circa 1965. All these-
materials and others speak to the close '
interconnection of Florida and Cuba from colonial
times to the present.

Contact: tel. 352-273-2778

Digital Work

Newspapers

Long runs of newspaper titles are available on
microfilm. Many are either filmed by the UF Libraries
itself or are purchased in the form of film.

For newspapers held in the UF Latin American
Collection, consult: http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/lac/
newspaperlistl.html

Long Term Projects

Projects in planning include preservation of over
nine million pages of the Havana Province notary
records dating from 1573 to 1900; also, there is
work to produce a definitive bibliography of Cuban
historical archaeology imprints published on the
Island in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. Many of
these pamphlet-sized publications, particularly those
from the early 20th century, survive as single copies
in the personal libraries of Cuba's living and recently
deceased historical archaeologists; UF will have access
and permission to digitize appropriate materials as this
further work develops.

Contact: tel.: 352-273-2768

Digitization at the University of Florida continues
a long history of preservation work, ensuring that
information in deteriorating volumes gains wider
access and continues to be available for research.
Cuban digitization projects began in 1996 with the
production of CD-ROMs of the Diario de la Marina
newspaper. The university is currently migrating those
digital images, with full text searching, to the Internet
as part of the Digital Library of the Caribbean
(http://www.dloc.com/), a multi-nation project
hosted by UF with funding from the US Dept. of
Education, the State Dept., UNESCO, and private
donors, as well as from partner institutions in more
than eight Caribbean countries. Other Cuban content
digitized by UF and available in the Digital Library
includes the official legislative journals of Cuba's pre-
Castro Senate and House of Representatives, dating to
the start of the 20th century. These holdings form the
largest freely available collection of digitized Cuban
law anywhere. In the larger UF Digital Collections
(http://www.uflib.ufl.edu/ufdc/?t=cuba), there are
even more digital resources about Cuba, covering
agriculture, revolution and wars of independence and
women's studies; formats such as maps, newspapers
and photographs as well as books and journals are
available.

Conservation

The Conservation Unit is responsible for the physical
condition of the collections; services include repair and
restoration, rebinding, deacidification, encapsulation,
construction of protective enclosures and environ-
mental monitoring. The unit also serves as a resource
for the university and the general public for questions
relating to the conservation of books, paper and photo-
graphic materials.

Contact: tel. 352-273-2835

Please support Cuban Studies Resources at the UF
George A. Smathers Libraries.

Contact the Office of Development, George A.
Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, P.O. Box
117000, Gainesville, FL 32611-7000. For more
information or assistance, please call: 352-273-2505.